


Let the Waves Take Them

by Tipsy_Kitty



Category: Supernatural RPF
Genre: M/M, Supernatural Reverse Big Bang Challenge 2013
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-04
Updated: 2014-02-04
Packaged: 2018-01-11 04:23:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,969
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1168645
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tipsy_Kitty/pseuds/Tipsy_Kitty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jared is a lonely farmer running an island homestead in the Pacific Northwest. When a storm washes Jensen ashore, Jared takes care of Jensen's injuries, and though Jensen likes the strange terreman, he's beginning to wonder if Jared will ever let him go.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Let the Waves Take Them

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [И пусть их унесет волна](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2248746) by [Schwesterchen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Schwesterchen/pseuds/Schwesterchen)



> Written for [](http://spn-reversebang.livejournal.com/profile)[**spn_reversebang**](http://spn-reversebang.livejournal.com/) 2013 for the AMAZINGLY GORGEOUS artwork by [](http://containerpark.livejournal.com/profile)[**containerpark**](http://containerpark.livejournal.com/), who was wonderful to work with and very patient even though this took me forever and a day to write. Thanks to [](http://firesign10.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://firesign10.livejournal.com/)**firesign10** for the beta and everybody on twitter or skype who had to listen to me natter on about the ins and outs *cough* of merman sex.

[ **Art Masterpost of Beautiful!** ](http://containerpark.livejournal.com/4248.html)

[ ](http://s1272.photobucket.com/user/tipsy_kitty/media/waves/waves1_zpsac6353e4.jpg.html)

 

 

**Summary:** Jared is a lonely farmer running an island homestead in the Pacific Northwest. When a storm washes Jensen ashore, Jared takes care of Jensen's injuries, and though Jensen likes the strange terreman, he's beginning to wonder if Jared will ever let him go.

 

 

Breakfast today is scrambled eggs and fried potatoes. Chicken eggs had taken some getting used to, tasting nothing like the salty salmon roe Jensen usually gathers straight from the ocean floor, but like most things in this strange “vacation” he’s on, he has adapted to them.

Jared brings him the eggs at dawn with his usual cheerful smile, asks Jensen if there’s anything he needs before Jared starts his chores, and then sets off to feed the animals and milk the cows.

“Maybe tonight we can see if I’m healed up enough to swim?” Jensen suggests, as he does almost every morning.

“Sure, yeah, maybe,” Jared says, but he doesn’t meet Jensen’s eyes and it doesn’t matter, Jensen doesn’t believe him anymore.

Jared Padalecki is crazy, Jensen’s decided. Devastatingly sexy and built like a Titan, with an infectious laugh that sounds like a drunken harbor seal… but still, crab-shit crazy.

Jensen sighs and sinks down until his back rests against the bottom of the 196-gallon water trough that’s been his home for the past week. He flips his tail fins up, splashing arcs of water over his head that catch the sunlight and turn each droplet into a tiny rainbow. Water spatters onto one of the grumpy roosters scratching around in the dirt by the rusty pump near Jensen’s head. Even underwater, his keen ears pick up the angry squawking of the bird, who would probably like to fly off this island if his wings would only allow him.

_You and me both_ , Jensen thinks as he smacks his tail against the salty water, blowing lackadaisical bubbles towards the sunfish blue sky.

 

 

~~~~~~~~~~

 

 

Jensen is fond of telling his fellow merfolk, when he runs across them during his travels, that they can keep their tropical waters and sandy sunning spots. Jensen likes his neck of the brine just fine. It’s cooler, sure, but the occasional storms in the eastern Pacific are nothing like the hurricanes that churn up the homes of his brethren. Jensen does not usually have to deal with cyclones that split the waters 100 feet deep, wreaking havoc on both land and marine life.

So maybe he was feeling a little invincible a few days ago when he decided to head to the surface and watch the spring rains march towards the coast. He loves watching the roiling dark clouds, the way the fresh water drops feel on his skin, how the occasional lightning fork lights up the world. It makes him feel alive, makes his gills flutter and his tail twist in an almost sexual excitement.

He had _not_ been expecting to encounter waves so fierce they slammed him against the rocky island where the terreman lived, had not been expecting to find himself washed ashore, stranded far from the water with a broken wrist and a dislocated shoulder. His powerful tail, which he’d always prized for its beauty and strength (his mama might even say he preened over it, with a gentle cuff to his head), was about as useful as lungs on an eel.

_Well, Styx_ , he'd thought as he'd lain on his back, staring up at trees he’d never seen so closely before. _Styx and damnation_.

The terreman found him the next day. Jensen had slept pretty well in the rain-soaked grass, enjoying the gentle inflation and deflation of his rarely used lungs, and deciding that he would worry about getting home once the storm had passed. Tomorrow was another day, he’d heard humans say before, and it seemed like good advice for the moment. At any rate, he was hardly up to the arduous (and unseemly, he would admit, if only to himself) crawl back down to the water’s edge.

He’d been awakened by large, gentle hands wiping mud from his skin and scales with a damp cloth, and opened his eyes to see the two-legged man he had sometimes spied on looking down at him, eyes shining with awe.

He sat up on his good elbow and said “Hello! My name is...Jensen,” just like he’d seen written on a scrap of paper that he’d found floating in the wake of a large party boat. The giant screamed a little, fell back on his rump with a wet splash, and Jensen grinned.

And that was how he met Jared.

 

 

~~~~~~~~~~

 

 

He’s learned a lot about Jared during what Jared calls his “rehabilitation” and Jensen privately calls his “confinement.”

Jared lives in a small thatched-roof cottage that sits at the highest point of his island. He has an acre of arable land, a spring-fed well that keeps him in fresh water, and all the crabs, oysters, salmon, and clams that he can eat. He takes care of three elderly dairy cows and a fat sow named Millie, a brood of nearly feral chickens, a barn full of crazy-eyed cats, and an excitable border collie named Toby.

Jensen’s trough, so recently stolen from the cattle and re-filled with seawater, sits down the hill from the cottage in the lee of a large barn, where the livestock weather out storms and the coldest winter days the Pacific Northwest has to offer.

As Jared explains that first night over a supper of scallops and polenta, accompanied by something called a ‘Riesling’ so sweet it makes Jensen’s tail curl, he has everything he could possibly need.

“That’s what my dad always said,” he tells Jensen. “Everything we need, right here. He brought us here when Jake and me were just kids, and we turned this bit of rock into a sustainable farm.”

“Yeah, but...” Jensen surveys the island doubtfully. “Don’t you get lonely?”

“Why should I?” Jared says with a shrug. “I’ve got friends.” He points behind him to where Toby is running circles around the chickens while the cows twitch their tails contentedly in the field.

Jensen’s not sure how to tactfully tell Jared that pets and livestock aren’t friends, that he seems lonelier than the last of the Great Auks as far as Jensen can tell, so instead he shrugs.

“And now I’ve got you,” Jared says with a shy smile. “And you’re the only friend I have with thumbs, so I’m gonna teach you checkers.”

He places an old door across the lip of Jensen's trough and sets up the game. Jensen’s puzzled at first, until he realizes they’re just playing a slightly different version of Clams and Cockles, and then he proceeds to wipe the seafloor with Jared.

Jared pouts at that, and suggests maybe they should play chess instead.

“Ooh, is that like Kingfish and Prawns?” Jensen asks. “I love that game.”

Jared sighs and resets the checkerboard.

They’re quiet for awhile, studying the board and listening as the hushed sounds of evening fall over the land.

“So, where’s your family now?” Jensen asks, and Jared sags a little at that.

“Gone,” Jared says. “Everybody’s gone.”

“What happened?”

“They got sick. I poisoned them, and they got sick, and now they’re gone.”

He gets up from where he’s been seated cross-legged on the ground and walks up the hill to his cottage, Toby at his heels. Jensen watches him go, feeling a chill run through him that’s wholly unrelated to the evening breeze.

 

 

~~~~~~~~~~

 

 

The next morning Jared shows up like the night before never happened, with a smile on his face and a plate of floppy disks, about the size of large abalone shells, that he calls pan-cakes.

“Morning,” Jensen says, watching Jared warily. “Sleep well?”

“Like the dead,” Jared says, and Jensen shivers a little at that. As he nibbles at his breakfast, Jared sits down next to the trough with his own plate piled high and digs in.

“So, ah, how did you end up out here anyway?”

Jensen’s never been great at drawing conversation out of people, so he’s not sure how Jared’s going to react to his line of questioning, not after last night’s weirdness anyway, but Jared just shrugs as he continues shoveling the sweet bread into his mouth.

“My dad always talked about having his own place off the grid, not having to rely on anybody, you know?”

Jensen doesn’t know, not really. His kind are hunters and foragers by nature, used to relying on themselves and their families for what they need to survive. He nods anyway to keep Jared talking.

“He had some office job that he hated, but he’d tell us stories at night about how our ancestors lived off the land, how noble it was.”

He stops talking for several minutes, and when he resumes, his voice is soft and sad.

“So my mom died, in a car crash, and my dad might have gone a little...” he trails off. “Well. Anyway, he sold everything we had and bought this island and brought me and Jake out here.”

“Jake was... your brother?”

Jared smiles, fond and wistful. “We missed our mom like crazy, but it was fun too, you know? I was only 10 and Jake was 12, and for a couple of little kids it was like this great adventure, like we were Robinson Crusoe or Jim Hawkins.”

Jensen has no idea who those people are, but he knows stories of adventurers and explorers. Every boy does, no matter whether they have two sturdy legs or one shimmery tail.

“When we weren’t helping dad, we were running all over the island, playing Pirates and Buccaneers, calling each other ‘scallywag’ and ‘bilge rat.’”

He’s quiet for so long that Jensen starts to grow concerned. “I have two brothers,” Jensen finally says. “I think they’re probably wondering where I am.”

“Yeah.” Jared sighs. “We’ll get you back in the water soon, yeah?”

Jensen really wants to believe that’s true.

 

 

~~~~~~~~~~

 

 

Jensen likes watching Jared work, likes watching his long body ( _no, tall_ , Jensen reminds himself, _humans are tall, not long_ ). The way the sun catches in his hair, the way his biceps bulge as he works the land and harvests shellfish from the ocean and takes care of his animals.

He’s attracted to Jared, he can admit that at least to himself, even though merman/terreman sex is pretty taboo among his kind. His mama would box his ears if she knew Jensen was even contemplating it.

Still, it’s not like it’s _completely_ unheard of. His Uncle Gil is fond of talking about a weekend he spent with a couple of marine biology majors on their rented houseboat, and if he’s to be believed, having two legs lends itself to a lot more interesting...positions than does having just one tail. Jensen and his cousins all loved to get Uncle Gil silly on fermented seaweed and then ply him with questions about that weekend. ( _Ah, the ’60s_ , the story would begin every single time he told it, but then after that the details would vary wildly.)

He likes watching Jared work, and he likes _Jared_ , even though Jared kind of scares him. Jensen is pretty much at Jared’s mercy until his wrist heals, and he’s a little worried that too many years alone have eroded some of Jared’s brain.

Plus there’s that bit about how he might have killed his family, though Jensen has more trouble believing that with each hour he spends in Jared’s company.

Jared appears with his lunch when the sun is high in the sky, and Jensen admires the way the sweat causes his brown skin to glisten.

“Did you sleep okay? Still have enough water?” Jared asks as he hands Jensen the plate.

“Yes to both,” Jensen says, poking cautiously at a grainy piece of bread and a baked tomato stuffed with cheese.

“I can bring you something else if you’d rather,” Jared says, sitting down on the grass next to Jensen’s head.

Jensen takes a bite and groans. “This is really good, you’re spoiling me. I’m going to be fat as a seacow when I get back home.”

Millie wanders up to see if Jared has any scraps for her, and Jared scratches at the bristles behind her ears.

“You’re not fattening me up to turn me into a chowder, are you?” Jensen asks, kidding. Mostly.

“Ick, no. I can’t eat anything with a name.”

Jensen eyes the pig. “I thought you land guys ate bacon like it was going out of style.”

“Shh!” Jared says, covering Millie’s ears. “I mean, we do, but I can’t really stand the idea. I’ve had her since she was just a little piglet...and between you and me, I think she’s smarter than Toby.”

Jensen laughs. “I’m telling Toby you said that.”

“Traitor.” Jared stands and brushes off the seat of his pants. “How’s your wrist feeling? Is the splint holding up?”

Jensen waves his hand and says, “Almost 100%. So you know, I should probably get out of your hair soon.”

“Of course,” Jared says, but then he leaves Jensen to go plant his squash, whatever that is. Jensen bangs the back of his skull against the trough and sighs.

Yeah, he likes Jared, but he’s not planning on spending the rest of his life living in a tub, no matter how roomy it is.

He looks to the shoreline, tantalizingly close, only 50 or so yards away. Normally Jensen would be strong enough to drag himself to the water’s edge, maybe even walk on his hands, but his shoulder is still twinging and there’s no way his wrist will take that kind of abuse. Not yet.

That night as they play checkers, Jared tells him a story about a mermaid who traded her life, as far as Jensen can tell, for an unworthy and dim-witted land-prince. Jensen interrupts numerous times to ask questions or straighten out the facts. He makes sure Jared realizes he doesn’t live in an underwater palace, and that there aren’t any witches at the bottom of the ocean. Except for maybe his great aunt Elka.

“So the witch tells her she can have her legs, but her tail will feel like it’s being split in half by a sword, and with every step she takes on land she’ll feel like she’s walking on broken glass or knives or whatever.”

“Wait, what?” Jensen interrupts. “How is that even possible, to feel like you’re all cut up when you’re not, just because some old hag says so?”

“It’s just a fairy tale, Jensen.”

“What’s that mean?”

“It means...that the story isn’t real. It’s fantastical and probably meant as a warning. But the emotions are still true.” He pauses. “I think. I mean, I haven’t been to school in like, ten years.”

“Okay, finish it.”

When the little mermaid has melted into the ocean and the story is over, they’re both quiet for several minutes. Then Jared leans in and places a gentle kiss on Jensen’s lips before rising and heading up the hill to his bed.

Jensen touches the ghost of a kiss on his lips, more confused than ever.

 

 

~~~~~~~~~~

 

 

“I saw you before, you know,” Jared is saying. It’s the next afternoon, and Jared has decided that sowing his corn can wait another day. After an early supper of fish stew, he had settled himself in a chair behind Jensen’s head. “I thought maybe I was seeing things but I wasn’t. You’re real.”

Jensen gargles inarticulately. Jared has been massaging something called ‘shampoo’ into Jensen’s hair and Jensen feels like a jellyfish, like every bit of tension in his body is escaping through his scalp.

“Smells like the South Pacific,” Jensen mumbles.

“Oh, yeah, I think it’s made with coconut oil? There’s a Squamish couple a few knots up the coast who make it. They boat over every so often and trade stuff like this for some of my wine.”

“Nggg.”

The fingers twist and tease every lock of Jensen’s hair, sending bolts of pleasure down his spine and all the way to the tips of his fins.

Jared rinses the coconut foam from his hair with a drinking glass and then sits back in his chair. “You wanna play checkers again?” he asks as he wipes his hands on a towel.

Jensen doesn’t want to play checkers. He flips over so he’s lying on his stomach and reaches for Jared’s shirt.

“Cards?” Jared asks nervously. Jensen pulls him closer and stretches up out of the water until their lips are barely touching.

“Do you want to kiss me again?” Jensen asks. Jared swallows and nods.

Their lips brush together, salty and sweet, with just the barest hint of pressure. Hot desire blooms in Jensen at the touch and he moans softly.

“Thank you,” Jared whispers, starting to pull away, but Jensen rolls his eyes and grabs Jared’s T-shirt, hauling him into the water with a mighty splash and flipping them so Jared’s lying against the floor of the tub.

“What the!” Jared sputters, and Jensen would laugh if he wasn’t so turned on. He gives Jared a heated look and leans down for another kiss, this one more desperate, lips and teeth and dancing tongues, and then Jared’s lips are pressing kisses onto his jaw, his neck, one fluttering gill.

“Is this okay?” Jared breathes against his skin. Jensen shudders and nods.

“So beautiful,” Jared murmurs between kisses.

“So many clothes,” Jensen says, and Jared sits up a little and starts peeling off his sodden t-shirt. Jensen reaches for the buttons of his jeans. “How can you stand wearing all this stuff?”

He leans back against the rim of the tub and watches as Jared stands up to tug his wet jeans down over his ankles. When he’s finally free of them, he kneels astride Jensen’s tail and cups Jensen’s face with his hands. His eyes are heavy-lidded with arousal.

Jensen runs his hands along Jared’s back and to the curve of his ass, marveling at the firm, round flesh of his buttocks, the strangely beautiful way that they part and become two separate legs.

He slides further down until he’s underwater so he can look at Jared properly. His cock isn’t so different from Jensen’s, although he finds it strange how exposed Jared’s sex organs are, the way they reside outside of the body, not safely nestled away in their protective sheath like Jensen’s. They seem vulnerable to Jensen.

He reaches for Jared’s cock, slides one hand down its length and up again. He can hear Jared above him, voice muffled by the water, saying “Oh, Jensen, oh, please.”

He strokes it again, caresses the testicles, and then slips his hands around Jared’s waist to grasp his ass and pull him closer, opening his mouth to taste Jared’s dick. It’s firm and silky in his mouth, tastes of sunlight and earth. He sucks at the head, hears Jared’s muted cries above but pays no mind.

Switching his breathing function from lungs to gills, he leisurely works Jared’s cock with his mouth, sucking and licking at a pace slow enough to be torturous, if the muffled pleas and groans from above are any indication.

[ ](http://s1272.photobucket.com/user/tipsy_kitty/media/waves/c203e90a-464f-4bac-a69f-35c3044ef058_zps0451f261.jpg.html)

He laps at the beads of precome that taste creamy-sweet compared to the salty water he’s submerged in, and then opens his throat and slides down the length of Jared, burying his face against Jared’s lower belly, squeezing Jared’s cock with every flutter of his throat.

He looks up through the water to see Jared staring down at him, transfixed, the lowering sun creating a halo of light behind Jared’s head.

He bobs up and down the length of Jared’s shaft again before releasing him and rising up out of the water. When he breaks the surface of the tub Jared looks wrecked, legs trembling and lips parted. Jensen wraps his arms around Jared’s neck and pulls him down into the water until their bodies are aligned, then guides Jared’s dick to the barely visible slit below his navel as it opens for Jared.

“God,” Jared says as their cocks brush together.

“Atargatis,” Jensen agrees, throwing back his head in pleasure and clutching at Jared’s broad shoulders.

He thrusts his pelvis up until Jared is slipping into Jensen’s hot, wet opening. Jared gasps, then plants his knees on either side of Jensen’s slim hips, giving him more leverage to rock into Jensen’s body. He sucks Jensen’s earlobe, kisses a bruise into his neck just above one sensitive, fluttering gill.

“God, Jensen, love you, know I shouldn’t but I do,” Jared murmurs.

Jensen brings his strong tail up out of the water between Jared’s spread legs, pulling Jared closer so his cock rubs against Jared’s skin and Jared’s cock is buried to the hilt. As Jared ruts into him, the waters around them churn with their frenzied coupling.

Jensen moans low in his throat as Jared’s thick cock rubs against his prostate with each thrust, as his own dick slip slides against Jared’s wet skin, until he throws his head back and cries out into the still evening. His orgasm rips through him like a tidal wave, leaving him senseless in its wake.

Jared’s arms tighten around him as he comes with a strangled cry and then sinks down onto Jensen’s body, spent.

Their bodies are, as it turns out, surprisingly, delightfully, compatible.

[ ](http://s1272.photobucket.com/user/tipsy_kitty/media/waves/7136777a-96e7-4f16-8937-de83eaeb6c5d_zps48d79b82.jpg.html)

 

Jared wraps his arms around Jensen tighter and presses soft kisses into the ripples of his gills. Jensen relaxes into his arms, his thoughts formless and shifting like the clouds overhead. He dozes. Somewhere nearby, a thrush trills.

“That was...” Jared whispers after a few minutes.

“Hmm,” Jensen agrees. “Amazing.” Still half asleep, he mumbles, “Now you’ll let me go?”

“Sorry,” Jared mumbles, relaxing his hold on Jensen.

“Not that,” Jensen says with a soft laugh. “Let me go home.”

If his brain didn’t feel like it was leaking out of his tail fins he might have noticed the way Jared tensed minutely.

“Let you go home?”

“Hmm. Can’t live in this thing. No matter how cute you are.”

“You can’t...” Jared begins. Jensen feels the water all around him shifting as Jared sits up.

“Jensen, did you, did you do that so I’d... _let_ you go?”

“Not really. Didn’t think it could hurt though.” He says as he stretches and yawns.

“Oh, God.” Jared’s voice sounds strange, and Jensen finally opens one eye to look at him.

Jared looks stricken.

“You thought...” Jared is scrabbling for the rim of the tub and when he finds it he practically vaults from the water, landing heavily on the dirt and then sinking to his knees. “You thought...you’re not a prisoner, Jensen!”

Jensen’s brain has finally started working again, and when he sees how distraught Jared looks he feels a flicker of guilt that he quickly smothers with indignation.

“I kept asking you to take me to the ocean, Jared!”

“No, you kept saying you should leave soon! You have a broken wrist, I was just giving you time to heal!”

“What was I supposed to think? You’re so lonely you talk to your dog. You won’t even eat your own livestock! You tell me stories about mermaids who walk around on knives for legs...”

Jensen runs a hand through his spiky wet hair. The euphoric haze from his orgasm has evaporated and he’s left with an unpleasant sensation of remorse and unease.

“I can’t believe you, Jensen. What the hell was that?” Jared waves a hand angrily at the water trough where they had so recently been joined in pleasure. “Some sort of—of bribe?”

Jared looks devastated, and the guilt flares up in Jensen’s chest again. He should apologize, they should talk, but everything’s felt so strange since he’s been stuck on this forsaken rock, and all his fears just keep tumbling out in a rush.

“What was I supposed to think?” he repeats. “Especially after you tell me you killed your own family!” He’s shouting now, shouting to block out the sorrow in Jared’s expressive eyes.

Jared turns his back on Jensen for a long moment, wiping at his face. Then he reaches for the towel, cast aside when Jensen had pulled Jared into the water, and wraps it around his waist.

“Jared...” Jensen says, feeling terrible, wondering how everything went belly up so fast.

Jared won’t look him in the eyes as he leans into the oversized trough and pulls Jensen from the water like he weighs nothing.

“Jared?” he tries again. Jared keeps walking on his bare feet down towards the dock where his rarely used boat bobs in the water. When he reaches the edge of the rocky shore he keeps moving until he’s up to his waist, the towel swirling gently in the water.

“You don’t get it,” Jared says finally, his voice barely a whisper. “The story. You’re not the mermaid, _I_ am. I’d have given my legs to be with you.”

Then he lets Jensen go.

 

 

~~~~~~~~~~

 

 

The sense of joy he expected to feel upon being home in the ocean where he could swim and flip and twist never comes. Instead he just feels heartsick, his limbs leaden. He stays near Jared’s island all through the night, calling for Jared to come to his senses and talk to him, but Jared stays in the cottage until the lowing of the cows brings him out at dawn. He feeds everybody, milks the cows and collects the chicken eggs, and then disappears into the cottage again.

He doesn’t look to the sea at all.

Jensen turns and swims away. _Fine_ , he thinks crossly. _Stupid land-princes, who needs ’em_.

He hadn’t given much thought to where he would go once he was better, and he finds himself swimming unconsciously towards his mother’s home, a series of underwater caves she shares with another other widow named Miri.

“What in the sea!” she exclaims when Jensen arrives the following afternoon. “I didn’t think you’d be around until the holidays, baby.”

She hugs him tight, holds him at arm’s length so she can get a good look at him, and pulls him in for another hug.

“What’s wrong?” she asks.

Jensen laughs. “What, I can’t come to see you unless something’s wrong?”

“You could, dear, but you seldom do.”

He shrugs. “It’s nothing. I hurt my wrist, thought I’d come let you wait on me till it’s better.”

“Ha!” she says, but she examines his wrist and decides he could maybe use a little pampering.

“Why don’t you take a nap, Jensen. I was just about to go rustle up a geoduck for dinner. Maybe after, we’ll have a game of Clams and Cockles?”

Jensen looks away quickly, remembering Jared’s look of indignation when he realized Jensen was a better ‘checkers’ player than he was. He feels a fist squeezing at his heart, but he manages to tell his mom that sounds fine before he curls up in the corner of the cave and pretends to sleep.

He wonders what Jared’s doing, and then quickly pushes the thought away.

He spends several weeks with his mom and Miri, celebrates the Birth of the Sea Goddess with them. His brothers turn up with their families on the big day, and Jensen plays with his niece and nephews, chasing them around the cave and through the reefs. He knows his family is concerned, that he doesn’t seem himself, but they let him be.

His wrist heals. His heart doesn’t.

One morning, when he’s floating on his back a foot above the surface of the cave ledge, trying to see the sun through 200 feet of water, his mother joins him.

“So,” she says, setting a pail of mussels between them.

“So,” he agrees, sitting up to help her shell them.

“So, are you ever going to tell me who it was that broke your heart?”

“What?” Jensen sits up straight. “That never—he didn’t—” at the pronoun slip he glances at her from the corner of his eye.

“Oh, honey,” she says, wrapping an arm around his shoulder. “I don’t care who you love. I just want to know who he is and why he’s making you so miserable, so I can kick his scaly hide.”

Jensen sighs. “It’s complicated.”

“Is he married?”

“No.”

“Is he a kraken?”

“Mo-om.”

“A terreman?”

Jensen doesn’t answer.

“Oh!” she says, sounding surprised. “Well. That _does_ sound complicated.”

“It’s not even that,” Jensen says. “I screwed up, Mom. I hurt him.”

She settles back against the exterior wall of her home. “I hurt your father when we were courting. Wasn’t ready to be tied down, wanted some more adventure in my life. Your father, Atargatis rest his soul, seemed dull in comparison to the things I thought I wanted.”

Jensen looks at her in shock.

“I was foolish, and I was young. And when I realized how badly I’d messed up, I did everything in my power to fix it, and your father and I were happy for many, many years.”

Jensen thinks about his dad, gone almost five years. His gentle nature, the fond way he’d look at Jensen’s mom when she was in one of her moods.

He sighs. “Jared probably hates me now. And what if—?”

“You’re going to have to go find that out for yourself, Jensen. Either way. You can figure out a way to make it work or you can move on, but you can’t spend the rest of your life pining in our living room.”

“Yeah. You’re right.”

She hugs him tight. “You can pine for a little longer, though. I miss having you boys undertail all the time.”

He laughs. “We miss you too. But you’re right, I have to go talk to him. I have to find out.”

 

 

~~~~~~~~~~

 

 

He pulls himself onto the pier with his considerable upper-arm strength, and then sits and curls his tail around him waiting.

In the distance, he hears Jared’s dog start barking.

“What is it, Toby?” Jared’s voice floats towards him.

Jared’s dog runs at him, grinning happily, jumping onto his lap and licking the salty water off of Jensen’s face.

Across the yard, Jared sticks his head out of the outbuilding he uses for pressing grapes and making wine. He’s laughing as he starts to call something to the dog, and then he sees Jensen and his face falls.

Jensen’s heart sinks like a stone dropped into the sea. He hates that he’s responsible for making Jared look like that. He half expects Jared to go back into the shed and shut the door, but instead he walks slowly towards the dock, stopping by the pump to wash grape juice off of his hands.

“Jensen,” he says as he steps onto the weather-beaten boards.

Jensen tries to say something, but all of his carefully rehearsed speeches fly out of his head now that Jared’s standing in front of him, tall and beautiful in the glow of the setting sun.

He pats the space next to him and Jared slowly seats himself on the ground in front of Jensen.

“I messed up,” Jensen finally blurts out. Jared shakes his head, but Jensen continues. “You were nice to me, you took care of me, and I messed everything up.”

“I tried to stop talking to the animals,” Jared says and Jensen screws up his forehead, confused. “I know it’s crazy, I _know_ it is, but I kept forgetting and it’s just too hard; I still talk to them and I won’t eat Millie and I know I’m like, a crazy hermit, and I’m sorry I frightened you.”

“No,” Jensen says. “You’re not crazy, you’re perfect. I was scared and stupid and I don’t like being dependent on other people and I took it all out on you.”

“So,” Jared says, fiddling with the lace of his boot.

“So,” Jensen says, touching Jared’s chin so he looks Jensen in the eye. “So can we talk? Maybe start over?”

“Umm, actually, there’s something I want to show you,” Jared says.

“In your cottage?”

Shaking his head, Jared stands and strips off his clothes before easing into the water.

“It’s too cold for you, are you crazy?”

“C’mon, this way.” Jared’s flesh is covered in bumps from the chill, but he swims a quick breaststroke about twenty feet around the circumference of the island. Jensen follows, admittedly distracted by the view.

Jared stops and treads water for a minute. “There’s a cave down here. Jake and I used to play in it until Dad found out. He freaked, made us promise not to come back here, and I forgot about it.” He looks sheepish. “You would have been happier resting your broken wrist here, Jensen. I’m really sorry.”

Before Jensen can answer, Jared takes a deep breath and plunges underwater, swimming with a powerful dolphin kick through a tunnel about 20 feet long before he comes to an underwater cavern. He breaks the surface and gasps for air.

“Jared! Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” he pants. “Sorry. Haven’t done that in awhile.”

Jensen looks around the cavern. Jared is sitting on a sandy shoal, legs submerged in water, taking in deep lungfuls of air. The cavern is surprisingly roomy, though not quite high enough for Jared to stand upright.

“Wow,” Jensen says, looking around at the sculptured formation of the rocky walls.

“It’s cool, right? But, I really did forget about it. I wasn’t planning on keeping you forever in a trough or whatever.”

Jensen swims up next to him and tucks his tail around Jared’s waist. “I know you weren't.”

Jared sighs, a sound of relief that echoes throughout the cavern.

“I also know you didn’t kill your family. It’s not in you.”

Jared bows his head. “I didn’t mean to,” he says quietly.

“So, tell me what happened.”

And Jared tells him, how his father had visited the mainland and brought back some kind of bug, how Jake and his father were sick in bed with the flu.

“And I fed them some vegetable soup, only I hadn’t canned it right. There were beets in it and I _hate_ beets, so I never checked that they weren’t spoiled. And they got even sicker after they ate the soup and then...”

Jensen wraps his arms around Jared’s shaking body.

“I didn’t know what to do. I was scared to leave them to go get help, but I didn’t have any way to make them better, and I guess I waited too long. By the time I found a doctor willing to come back to the island with me, they were...they were gone.”

Jared cries then, great wracking sobs that make Jensen want to cry too, but he doesn’t. He holds Jared and rocks him and tries to keep Jared warm in the cold water.

“I’m so sorry,” Jared sobs into his hands, and Jensen doesn’t think it’s him Jared’s asking forgiveness from.

“They know, they know,” he whispers over and over again, until Jared’s sobs have trailed off to an occasional snuffle.

He wipes at Jared’s eyes with his thumbs and Jared huffs.

“That doesn’t really help, you know,” he says with a hiccup. “You’re already wet.”

“Well. Sea water is better for your skin than tears,” Jensen says.

“Yeah?”

“Definitely. I heard it from my crazy Uncle Gil, so it must be true.”

Jared brings his tears under control, and peers at Jensen through his wet strands of hair. “So,” he says finally. “Friends?”

Jensen shakes his head, and Jared looks wounded until Jensen pulls him in for a kiss. “I’m hoping for a whole lot more than friends. If you are.”

Jared’s smile is like the sun breaking through storm clouds. Jensen thinks they might just be okay.

-the end-

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End file.
